Yep; they pulled the 'Lawl; buy our next game in two+ years if you want the full story' nonsense.Here I thought after 999 Aksys was a bit above that. :-\ That...honestly kinda ruins the game justa little for me. If I get hooked into a story I prefer to finish it from start to end. I don't watch trilogiesif I don't have all three parts. I don't read series novels until I have all the installments. Ect.

This is just kinda...cheap and underhanded. *sigh* Not sure how much of the story I'll even rememberin 2014 (or 2015 if they're slow) or if I'll even still have the game around for a refresher. The way they have it set up, unlike 999,you're pretty much going to have to have Virtue's Last Reward fresh in your mind to know what's going on.

Maybe I'll feel better once it all settles in but for right now...low blow Aksys. Low blow.

One quick thing: don't blame Aksys. They're only the US publisher, I doubt they have any real say in what happens with the game.

I had a feeling it wouldn't be the last. And it's a good series, so I see no problem with them making a possible "three-quel". The label on the front says it's part of the "ZERO ESCAPE *Series*", and usually you don't use a label like that to something only two books/games long.

There are a couple of extra scenarios that cover stuff. Check your flowchart after you got the credits. It's not as cliffhanger-y as you seem to think it is, it's more science fiction-y waveform collapse multiple worlds stuff.

Even with kinda crappy graphics, the shock scenes still (well) shock quite damn well (takes me back to the PSX/PS2 horror days...that's probably not a compliment, but I mean well).

Just got Dio's ending, and tried to hit up the magenta arc for all but one path. Got his ending, then a bunch of Game Overs (which are sorta: "Well shucks, that happened, let's go chill out I guess"), and one "to be continued".

I like this game is much less subtle about it's upcoming spoilers. And the puzzles are fantastic and really make you sit and think (except, I got real paper, the in-game memo just doesn't always cut it). I REFUSE TO SWITCH TO EASY MODE-O!!!

A few major gripes: First, is sitting through the door-opening sequences. Nuance? Maybe... But, these take a good five seconds longer than anyone needs to see, and can happen several times in a row. That, and c'mon... silent protagonist? I get it in the event the character doesn't say a damn word (though I hate it even then), but Sigma has a fully fleshed out personality, there's no point in keeping him silent, it just makes it kinda awkward to go from voice acting to text beeps (and at least Troy Baker would have been a great character to vocalize some of Sigma's funnies and dramatics). A minor nuance is Amanda Wyn Lee's [sp?] voice... She's like a 60 year old doing characters 1/3 her age (effectively making it seem like she's trying to hard to sound "cute" and sweet as Clover). Guess I'm just bored of her voice.

It seemed like everything wrapped up in a "we're not going to tell you whether or not this is the timeline that survives the apocalypse or not", not a "OK WAIT FOR MORE!" Supposed to make you think, not wait. Yeah, there were things that weren't wrapped up in a "OK HERE YOU GO" way, but I feel like it did a better job at the philosophical questionmark ending than, say, Mass Effect 3.

It seemed like everything wrapped up in a "we're not going to tell you whether or not this is the timeline that survives the apocalypse or not", not a "OK WAIT FOR MORE!" Supposed to make you think, not wait. Yeah, there were things that weren't wrapped up in a "OK HERE YOU GO" way, but I feel like it did a better job at the philosophical questionmark ending than, say, Mass Effect 3.

Eh; that still doesn't do much for me personally. Maybe I'm taking this from too much of a 'simple minded' approachbut VLR still doesn't provide any sense of 'basic closure' for me, at all. Let me use the Harry Potter example again. Book 1.

Do you really know everything about Voldemort at the end? No. Do you know all the details about Harry's past? No.Do you know anything about what might be coming up in the next installments besides 'another year at Hogwarts'? No.

Is the whole 'Sorcerer's Stone/Quirrel' plotline pretty much resolved and self-contained? Yes.

My problem with VLR is that the 'escape and survive' aspect is this series' 'Sorcerer Stone'. 999 is the prime example of howI like my resolutions. Main plotline fairly well tied up but with hanging questions (Where was Akane? Who was that womanin the desert? Does Ice-9 really exist? ect.) You at least know the characters escaped their circumstance and are pursuingthose answers which may or may not be relevant to a 'sequel' (at the time). In this game you pretty much never escape; ever.In any of the timelines. The closest thing you have to 'resolution' is the Phi/Akane endings which pretty much say 'Yeah, you'reall going to die unless you succeed in the events of next game. So wait til next game.'

Akane pretty much said 'everyone' was infected by Radical-6 in order to create the Morphogenic Field effect. Only Alice andQuark got any Axelavir; but Akane seems to suggest it's only a temporary stopping measure to counter act the virus at its worst.So no matter which timeline you look at everyone's pretty much going to commit suicide at the end of it until the events of Volume 3erase the Radical-6 from ever getting out.

Hmm, interesting. I'll have to go back and try that over the week then. I think there's only three or four puzzles I did on Easy (funnily enough half of those were 'Hey dummy; look at the Archive' moments). Shouldn't be too hard to go back and solve them again.

Alright so...just got the Old Akane ending...I give up. XP Too much next-game plot teasing.I should've known better than to expect anything solid. Not sure I much care for the fact that they'reoutright saying there's going to be a Deus Ex Machina (literally) as a character. Will give them a chance butexpectations are lowered.

Also for some reason the whole 'We can send people's bodies back in time' thing is tripping my'jumps the shark' senses. Which is weird because I've had no problem with the other out therethings like Morphogenic Field or sentient AIs, ect. It feels too much like they're using Schrodinger'sCat as 'It's magic!' to conveniently explain plot gaps. (Or just bad writing; like how certain characterswill randomly swap their Ally/Betray votes for no reason. If nothing changes about the circumstanceleading up to their vote then their vote shouldn't change. You can't just say 'Oh, Schro's Cat did it'because there is no 'poison gas' to create that 'random' circumstance needed for a variable outcome.)

they may either have a limited sense of alternate possibilities, or Sigma subconciously broadcastedthe intent of which way he'd vote, and most players WOULD decide right away rather than literally at thelast second. I'd say being a robot Luna would be immune, but I get the impression she couldn't bringherself to select betray versus an actual human, especially not Sigma or K.

Quark- I don't think he ever votes. (Or if he did it was under R-6's influence.)

The problems come in these two characters:

Alice- No morpho field as far as I'm aware; meaning she can't send or receive possibility signals.

Dio- Unlike Alice I'm 100% sure this guy isn't an esper at all. Would have to check every single votingincident but I'm pretty sure when he decides to show his colors in voting is almost 'random' despite external circumstances. The times he decides 'Okay; time to win this.' are seemingly arbitrary.

-Juneakane lost her charm over the years; made for a pretty 20-something though. It becomes pretty trippy to think about her in her 999 personality when she's pretty damn calculated and pretty far from sweet. But makes an interesting anti-hero

- Still some lingering mysteries; surprisngly largely untouched was Free the Soul cult and, to some extent, Phi (and maybe why she looks like a gender-bent Santa). Everyone except for Phi and Sigma had a good "origin story" to explain how they wound up where they are.

- Not really sure where they're going with K/Kyle -- and I'm super confused what has happened with him... making his final conversation as a character merely labeled as "?" didn't help either...

- The constant door opening was seriously awful to sit through, the layout was really inconsequential to the overall story and gameplay, so sitting through it was uneventful and sadly unskippable 90% of the time...

- Quark and Alice seem to have been more dead/psycho than actually useful

- Alice's vote when they thought she was KOd was definitely creepy; but unfortunately given a lame reason in the "right" path.

- I love Luna, she was genuinely ok. I liked Seven for the same reason.

- Dio sucked. Made that way though. What was with the outfit? No mystery could solve that one...

- A shame "tin foil" was never brought up again...

- Was there any significant symbolism behind the sun-eating lion?? That flew by me...

- Love the fore-shadowing with why people have magical anime jumping powers: they're on the moon!!! That concept was sort of...used only when it was convenient though....

- Wtf is with the double-standards? You watch half a dozen endings where someone hits the 9 door and you just watch them go, then the two times you do you're either rendered unconscious... or rendered unconscious so the rest of the cast can cut off your cyborg arm and win it themselves and leave you alone forever.

- Good form. Much like 999, VLR had it that even IF the AB Game winners had escaped, there was really no where worth escaping to; much like how it was unlikely Ace and Clover would have figured out the Q-door puzzle in 999.

- Loved Tenmyouji... his reveal was subtle and wonderful, definitely hinted at, but hard to theorize given the confusion between being asleep for 5 days or 45 years. Wonderful spoiler there. But... someone's gotta tell him no ass is worth that much attention. I'm glad Quark was there I guess.

- wtf was with Sigma looking like some Anime Space Pirate? The right eye thing was a bit much, and his [real and old] face reveal looked funny. I dunno (or "donno"), if they were gonna do low-res 3D poly with lame animations for certain action scenes, I'd have rather they had their artist draw one good frame than use the 3 second FMVs. One that note: Poor Luna... her ending was brutal.

- One thing that wasn't really elaborated on was Phi and Sig in the Security Room. He seems to get hit really hard with symptoms for Rad-6: He loses his proper thought processing and everything felt sped up (Phi talked at 2x speed), but then he merely loses consciousness, goes for a snooze, and wakes up fine -- this doesn't come up again...

- Which reminds me: The prognosis for Rad-6 is also vague (why did Quark and Alice's symptoms advance so quickly? Under what conditions does it spread? Why does only one ending deal with this [the mass-suicide in Clover's ending?] ?) and the idea of anti-bodies is disregarded despite being mentioned twice. Furthermore, isn't it stupid to ONLY make one antidote copy of axelavir? They shoulda made 50 or something!!!

- The prospect of deactivating four bombs while playing the AB game would have likely had me....expel all/any bodily fluids from mouth and/or bottom. I sympathized with Alice when she took a scalpel to herself saying something to the effect that it's all messed up she should just "off" herself

- Genius plot; all (ok, well, most) elements made an excellent comeback, 11/10 on that, the writers should be proud and give themselves a jolly ol' pat on the back!